From Solar Panels to Sarah Palins: The Top 10 Green Politics Stories of 2008

5. Imagining a $700 Billion Bailout for the Environment

Stemming from the fall of mortgage-backed securities, spiking oil prices, and a host of other variables, the economic crisis came to a head in September and October when the federal government began looking at corporate bailouts of unprecedented proportions. In a piece that did particularly well at StumbleUpon, Jennifer Lance considered what investments of this size could do for the environment:

“What if the US government had responded to the twenty years of dire warnings by James Hansen in the same manner as the current economic crisis?  Such an aggressive response may have stopped climate change and saved our economy through green jobs and technology.”

4. New York City to Get LED Street Lighting

This is the story responsible for a major re-arrangement in this year’s best of.  Just last week, Jerry James stone reported on big news out of New York City that city officials would be testing energy efficient LED street lights. If successful, all of the city’s 300,000 street lamps could potentially be replaced with the LED models. This post did well at digg, reddit, and StumbleUpon.

3. Did McCain’s Colorado River Gaffe Cost Him in the West?

While campaigning in Colorado, Sen. John McCain told the Pueblo Chieftan that, as president, he would consider renegotiating the Colorado River Compact:  a virtual no-no in headwater states like Colorado where Democrats and Republicans alike think downstream states already get more than their fair share of water. In a post that did well at digg, Timothy Hurst wrote:

“John McCain has again said something to cause his fellow western-state Republicans to wince at his political inexpedience and apparent naivete for the issue at hand. And even though the Senator has now recanted and begun damage control, Democrats are hoping that this one will cost him. Some even argue that the gaffe was so severe, he may have just lost Colorado.”

2. European Union Bans the Incandescent Light Bulb

EU energy ministers meeting in Luxembourg gave final approval to an EU-wide ban on incandescent light bulbs that would begin in 2010. The new light bulb scheme will initially apply to bulbs of 75 watts and higher. The phasing out of the traditional bulbs set to begin on March 1, 2009, is part of a larger EU strategy to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. This story got a good bit of attention at reddit and digg.

1. How 1900′s Environmental Predictions Fared

Admittedly, the most viewed post in 2008 at Red, Green, & Blue is not about environmental politics, per se, and it didn’t really happen in 2008, but using our simple metric of popularity, it was the ‘biggest.’

In 1900,  John Elfreth Watkins put together a collection of predictions in the Ladies Home Journal about the future of the U.S. and the world by the end of the 20th century. Timothy Hurst cherry-picked 14 enviro-related predictions and looked at what actually happened one hundred years later. Some of the predictions are uncannily accurate, yet others were more than a little wide of the mark. This post had good traffic from digg and reddit, and especially Yahoo! buzz.

*We’ve included links to some of the social media networks where individual posts have performed well. For brevity’s sake we kept the number of those links to one or two per post. That notwithstanding, we are exceedingly grateful to ALL of you for the support you have shown on ALL of the social media and web 2.0 spaces in 2008. We would be nowhere without your help.

Images: © Imre Forgo (2008); © Foto.fritz (solar panel); (Palin); Clemson via flickr (flat tire); My Heromudpig via flickr (NY nightscape); laszlo-photo via flickr (light bulb); yahoo! buzz (crystal ball). (solar install).